Happy Easter, Happy Passover.

This weekend was a very kimchi/latke weekend. Friday, we had some Tater friends over to dye Easter eggs. This entailed the big girls (Mouse and friend) dyeing eggs while the little girls (Chipmunk and friend’s little sister) ran amok and looked cute. LP slept through the whole thing. On Saturday we headed over to see Latke’s local family for Passover Seder. Latke, if you haven’t already read, hails from a family of the Jewish persuasion. Sunday, was, of course, Easter. We didn’t go to church (haven’t done that in quite some time, maybe I’ll write about that someday), but, as we live in a predominantly Christian nation, it is darned difficult to miss Easter Sunday.

I know some might vehemently disagree with me, but I really saw much more similarity than difference between what Jews and Christians were all talking about this weekend. Deliverance from pain and suffering, and its intrinsic transformative value. Commemorating a past that lights a path to a righteous life. Redemption and a covenant relationship with God. There’s more, of course, but these ideas stuck with me. (I know, I know, the whole Jesus part. Let’s just agree to disagree, eh?)

I couldn’t help but ponder, what does it mean to us in our every day lives? While all of this was swirling around in my head this weekend, I couldn’t help but think of Robert Saylor.

Let me share a memory.

When Mouse was still cooking in my belly, Latke and I took a birthing class. One of the exercises we did in that class was to take a number of index cards, and write on them the things that we wanted for our birth experience. Then on the other side, we wrote the opposite outcome. People wanted things like short labors, home births, no c-sections. On the flip sides of those would be long labors, hospital transfer, surgical births. The one thing that everyone had in their card pile?

“healthy and alive”

We laid those cards out, with all of our desired outcomes facing up. One after another, we had to choose which outcome to let go, and flipped that card over. Each set of partners had different assortments of outcomes, but at the end, every one of us chose the same card to leave untouched. It was the universal value. We all wanted our babies to be healthy and live. The thought of losing our babies terrified each and every one of us.

In some way, aren’t both Easter and Passover about remembering those before who also turned over that proverbial last card? Whether the suffering of an entire people, or the sacrifice of one son, it seems to me that remembering is tantamount.

The Saylor family has turned over their last card. They have lost their child. Robert “Ethan” Saylor was probably not what his parents ever expected; no children are. I’m sure, however, that he was exactly the person they wanted. Like all who have died in tragedy and violence, I hope his death lights a more righteous path for us all.

When I looked up the word “righteous”, I find synonyms like “justice”, “decency”, and “equity”. That sounds right to me.